All Blog Entries

TomTom and TeleAtlas use their crowd sourced contributors to plot worst congestion in the United States.
Congestion is considered traffic that is 70% or less of the posted speed limit.
TeleAtlas has an audio podcast on this here and a full press release here.

For a limited time, save 10% off all orders over $200* placed at the mp3Car Store. Offer is good through December 13, 2009. Check out our wide selection of touch screen monitors, custom mobile computers, hardware, software, and peripherals. Use coupon code "HOLIDAY09" upon checkout to receive the discount. *Offer excludes Telematics Computer Bundle.

The BoomzBox HD is just what we’ve asked for in an AM/FM radio. With sound quality that rivals factory head units and an easy straight forward installation procedure, the BoomzBox HD should be your first choice for radio.

Just released: Price will be $179 on the mp3Car Store soon. Release date still to be determined.

What’s in the box?

The BoomzBox HD comes with the tuner box, driver CD, a USB-driven controller box, an 8-pin DIN connector, USB cable, and two power adapters for ease of installation.

Description:

The BoomzBox HD is a fully RoHS compliant HD radio tuner built from the ground-up for car PC use. The tuner box is a bit smaller than similar devices on the market. It’s built with a solid aluminum casing to withstand automotive applications. The tuner box has just 3 connections, an antenna input port, a pass-through antenna output port, and the 8-pin interface connector.

The companion device in the BoomzBox HD package is the converter box. This box converts the signal from the tuner box via the din cable, thus allowing audio to come straight from the USB cable. Competing devices require both a serial/USB connection and an audio output to be sent to the PC. The ease of installation is the highlight of the BoomzBox HD. Connect the DIN cable to the converter box, connect the USB to a PC, and connect power to the green power connector, and the BoomzBox is ready for software. The creators even went a step further by including 2 power options, a brick plug, and a bare connector ready for your unregulated 12v and ground wires.

The driver CD includes drivers for windows XP/VISTA/7. It also includes a test application to put the BoomBox to use. The BoomzBox is fully compatible with the most popular front-ends like Centrafuse and RideRunner.

The most important quality in a FM/AM tuner is the audio quality, and the BoomzBox matches the sound quality of units from Directed and Visteon. The HD channels sound as crisp and clear as you could ever want from radio. That being said, the BoomzBox has the issue of HD signals clipping in and out that most all HD radios have. If you can deal with that small issue, the BoomzBox HD is the standard for which future car PC radios will be judged.

The Positive:

• High-quality sound in standard and HD modes
• Easiest HD radio to install on your computer
• Audio over USB leaves your line-in open
• Built specifically for car PC use

The Negative:

• HD signal clipping is still present
• Missing the optional Head and remote other HD radios have

The Verdict:

The BoomzBox HD is just what we’ve asked for in an AM/FM radio. With sound quality that rivals factory head units and an easy straight forward installation procedure, the BoomzBox HD should be your first choice for radio.

Tom Berry (aka Bugbyte) takes a look at the new BoomzBoxHD, a device used to add HD radio to a mobile PC. This ingenious device will be available on the mp3Car store in the upcoming weeks and proves to be a quick and painless installation. Software for the interface is included. Read the complete review below.

What is it?

The BoomzBox HD radio is an HD radio that is controlled and played back through your PC.

The BoomzBox HD radio is an easy way to add HD radio to your car PC setup. Out of the box, there are two main components, the BoomzBox HD radio itself and a USB interface box. The interface box connects via USB cable to the PC and also via an 8 pin mini DIN cable to the BoomzBox. In addition, the 12 volt power supply connects to the interface box. The setup is very similar to using the mp3Car XM radio adaptor and XM Direct radio except that the BoomzBox's audio is routed via USB into the PC -a very nice touch that makes it simple to manage with front end programs.

The last connection is the car antenna on the BoomzBox itself. The Boomzbox includes a standard Motorola antenna socket that allows you to plug a standard U.S. car antenna cable into it with no modification (some cars, like my VW Beetle require an adaptor to the Motorola socket). In addition, the BoomzBox includes antenna in and out to allow the user to keep a head unit on the car's antenna as well as the BoomzBox (you'll have to purchase the Motorola cable to do this separately). A very thoughtful addition that many folks will find handy.

Once connected, installation is a snap. The included mini-CD has the required drivers on it. Just plug the interface box into the PC, load the drivers and check the device manager to ensure that the interface box shows up under the USB devices and also under the COM devices with a port number assigned to it. (If you don't have a CD/DVD drive with a caddy on it, you'll have to download the drivers and software to a USB stick like I did. It would be nice if they came on a full sized CD as many car PC's have slot load drives that can't handle a mini-CD.)

The BoomzBox HD comes with a software app that mimics a car head unit to control the radio. It includes seek, direct tune, three banks of presets and several different skins to change the look of the app. On initial startup the app scans for the radio. If all is well, it will automatically find it and turn it on the BoomzBoxHD. Specs for the radio were not included with my test unit but to my ears the quality of the sound was very good, although I have to say that I'm no audiophile. It certainly sounds much better than analog FM radio!

One important feature of the BoomzBox is the USB audio feature. This reduces the number of cables from the box as well as solving the problem of getting the sound into your PC. In addition, I found that when using the RideRunner car front end that the program would seamlessly switch between the radio and mp3 files without requiring any input from the user. Nice!

I tested the BoomzBox HD with the RideRunner car PC front end program. RideRunner is arguably the most popular car front end and I'm happy to report that it worked perfectly with this program. A simple change to RideRunner's rr.ini file to specify "HDRADIO" was all it took for the program to recognize the BoomzBox. Using the Carwings skin I was able to play and tune the radio with no difficulty.

What could be improved about this product? There's little to dislike about the BoomzBox HD but I found a couple of things that would be nice to improve. The separation of an interface box and the radio itself makes the product clunky and adds more cables to your car PC mix. With space at a premium in many car PC installations, it would be nice if the interface box was integrated into the radio itself with all cabling internal. I'd be willing to trade a bigger box or even some type of header pin connector system that would allow the interface box to piggyback onto the BoomzBox.

In addition, the requirement for 12 volt power is, I suppose, necessary but tiresome. With 5 volts on the USB line, it would be nice if the USB power could have been used to run the BoomzBox, eliminating another cable. I'm fairly sure that the 12 volt power runs through the mini DIN plug and powers the BoomzBox rather than the USB interface and it seems like it might have made more sense to put the 12 connection in the side of the BoomzBox as opposed to the interface box.

I hope that mp3car makes the standard for control of the BoomzBox HD available for hobbyists since the BoomzBox is currently a Windows only device. There's no reason it couldn't work with Linux or OS X since it uses standard Prolific FTDI drivers that make the BoomzBox show up as a serial port device. It would be dead simple for a developer to code up a program that would allow the BoomzBox to work on either operating system.

But these are all nits, really. If you are looking for an easy way to add HD AM/FM radio to your car PC setup, the Boozbox HD is the product for you. It solves the dilemma that many car PC'ers have of "should I keep my head unit or go with an amplifier?" by providing high quality HD radio reception that is piped into the PC and easily controlled by current front ends.
The Positive:

Works as advertised, sounds great, easy to connect to system. USB cable routes sound directly into the PC making it easy to manage.

Thumbs up! The radio Just Works(tm) and is easy to configure to integrate into RideRunner. BoomzBox software player works well, sounds great, sensitivity of radio is good. The BoomzBox HD comes with a pass through antenna cable connector which allows you to connect it inline with the antenna and keep your head unit connected if you desire.